Men Pole Too – By Keith Fusco

Men Pole Too

Men Pole Too is a Facebook page that I started a year ago on the 9th October 2014 to help educate the world that pole dancing isn’t just for women and that a lot of men do it too. I also created it, in the hope that it could be somewhere that likeminded people could interact, share their photos and stories with everyone else.

In the year that the page has been running, it’s reached just under 1,500 likes and the top post on the page which is the male pole dancing MoneySupermarket advert has reached 102k people and been viewed 23k times and had nearly 500 shares. I’ve also been speaking to Kyle McIntire who is the male pole dancer in the video to get a little feature on the page for him.

Here’s my little story of how I got into pole and then decided that there wasn’t enough male pole orientated places to interact with online:

For me, it all started back in late July 2014 when I attended my first private pole lesson at Northern Pole Dance in Newcastle with Lesley Jackson. I had been going out with a girl at the time who did pole dancing there and I found it interesting and it looked like fun (And she always used to say about how good it made her feel), so I wanted to try it. After the odd urban pole experience, I plucked up the courage to do a double private lesson with her and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I still remember now having the private lesson and then attempting to drive after it and I struggled when changing gears, which was followed by going for steak which was even more of a struggle due to the overall workout of muscles that I’d just done, but I felt amazing for it and was much more fun than the gym.

Unfortunately, our relationship didn’t last too long after that and I had stumbled into a pit of despair and depression and was at a real low point in my life, where I didn’t want to see or speak to anyone or even leave the house. I beat myself up for a while and then decided that was enough and I wanted to move on with my life and be happy again. Pole was an answer I thought, but I didn’t want to go back to Northern Pole in case I bumped into my ex, so I got in touch with Tempest and enquired about classes and then arranged my first one.

When I was going to the class, I had a huge wave of mixed feelings running through me, I was excited but nervous at the same time as it’s somewhere new (And I hadn’t done that many pole lessons so I didn’t really know much) and a man going into a class which is generally female only was nerve racking. I was already at an all-time low with confidence of myself as a whole and had thoughts in my head that I’d be judged about why I was there.

On 28th August 2014, I walked through the door at Tempest and I was welcomed with smiles and happiness and I was made to feel right at home. Over a year later I’m still part of my little Tempest family and going to classes always cures any sort of depression or sadness that I have. My overall fitness and strength have come along leaps and bounds and my confidence had been repaired from what it used to be. I’m a different person than what I used to be and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

On the Men Pole Too page, it just started off with sharing my own photos and writing up my own things to go on there, but as it’s started to grow and be shared about I have a lot more regular people who comment, like and share their own content with me which I then share on the page. I have a social media schedule set-up where I have a 6pm and 9pm post each day and each day there’s a different subject like “Pole Monkey Mondays” and “Pole Flagging Friday” and share photos and videos according to that day and time’s subject.

I have a few ideas for the future which I’d like to do as the page grows (Being a photographer and filmmaker I want to create my own unique content), such as creating a weekly or a monthly video feature in that I get to speak to other male pole dancers and find out about them, how they started, what they enjoy about pole, what they hope to achieve etc. I’m hoping to also do some pole photo shoots with other male pole dancers so that I can have more content to share on the page and also unique content which isn’t already out there. I also have a number of clothing ideas that I want for myself, so I may venture into doing some Men Pole Too clothing lines if the interest is there.

Until then, I’m hoping to just continue as it is and provide content to everyone following the page to get the word out there and educate people that pole dancing is for everyone to do, not just women! #MenPoleToo